a presentation on presentation todd huffman & laura corner december 11 th 2014 “ ’t ain’t...

A Presentation on Presentation

Todd Huffman & Laura CornerDecember 11th 2014

“’T ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.

That’s what gets results”James Young and Sy Oliver

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/CDF/Mphys/APonPGraduateSpeakingCourse.ppt

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/CDF/Mphys/APonPGraduateSpeakingCourse.ppt

Introduction

1. Learning about giving good presentations

2. Visual impact

1. How not to have any impact at all

2. How to have plenty of impact; just in the wrong way.

3. How to have effective visual impact

3. Encourage you to Develop your Presentation style

4. Also show you many things you should NEVER do.

5. Then show you that you can almost always do what you should NEVER do…if you think about it carefully.

Introduction

The first thing to note is that the “slides” in this presentation that are in this format are not meant to be shown on the screen – they are meant to be read as text.

The second point is that these notes are not meant to be prescriptive, but descriptive and illustrative.

In general, I have created artificial examples as illustrations – there are plenty of good and bad examples out there, and we have all sat through many good and bad presentations. I have shown examples, usually as extremes, but without comment regarding which extreme I prefer. In fact, it is sometimes helpful, in order to make some specific point, to include a slide that is extreme in some way – if the rest of the presentation is “good”, it will make a point.

The aim of the graduate seminars is to allow you to develop your presentational “style”. This is something that is, or should be, unique to you, and will say something about you, your personality, your subject and your competence. Nearly all of this is in the sub-text, but it is there. A poor presentation of a fascinating subject may well fail to convince. An exciting presentation of some rather pedestrian information may be very well received. This is not to say that style is more important than, or a substitute for, substance, but it is to emphasise that you owe it to your audience (who usually don’t have to sit there) to make it is as easy as possible for them to understand your message.

So, the basic message of this “Presentation on Presentation” is that whatever appears on the screen (Font, size, character, colour, placement, pictures, graphs, animation, extraneous information…) should in all cases be the result of a conscious choice, and not because it is the system default, or because you borrowed a slide from a friend.

Fonts

There are several choices to be made under the font banner, and all are important.

– Style: Serif or Sans Serif– Appearance: normal, bold, italic, underlined or combined

– Size: small (8pt), medium (12pt), Large (16pt), Huge (20pt), Vast (24pt)– Colour: foreground (text) and background

The next two slides give some examples – what do YOU like?

Hint: Get hold of a data projector, look at the screen in a large room, from the back.

Other issues – do you want to try odd fonts?

Gigi, Castellar, Script, Btradley Hand ITC …

Note: If you use any fancy fonts, you must embed them with the presentation, otherwise you risk having a very different layout (Greek not turning out as Greek, for example, makes a real mess of formula or Feynman diagrams). For PowerPoint, use

OPTIONS/SAVE/EMBED TRUETYPE FONTS.

Have a nice day

(Times New Roman 14pt normal)

Have a nice day(Times New Roman 20pt normal)

Have a nice day


Have a nice day



Have a nice day

(Times New Roman 14pt italic)

Have a nice day

(Times New Roman 20pt bold)

Have a nice day


Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt normal)

Have a nice day(Arial 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt normal)


Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt italic)

Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 14pt normal)

Have a nice day(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt normal)

Have a nice day(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 36pt normal)Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt italic)

Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Bradley Hand ITC 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Gigi 14pt normal)

Have a nice day(Gigi 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Gigi 20pt normal)

Have a nice day(Gigi 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Gigi 36pt normal)

Have a nice day(Gigi 20pt italic)

Have a nice day

(Gigi 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Gigi 20pt bold)

Have a nice day



Have a nice day


Have a nice day



Have a nice day

(Times New Roman 14pt italic)

Have a nice day


Have a nice day


Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt normal)


Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt normal)

Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt normal)


Have a nice day

(Arial 14pt italic)

Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt bold)

Have a nice day

(Arial 20pt bold)

Slide Background

There are many different backgrounds from which to chose. As always, you need to make a choice, and that choice needs to be deliberate. In making your choice, consider the following point (and it is really the only point).

How will my choice of background help my audience understand my message?

The next two slides give some examples (several per slide, so that you can compare).

Background with Washout

• Can still “see” the picture

• and the text reasonably clearly

• … but still distracting?

Making a point• Full text

• Without the Higgs mechanism, all of the particles in the Standard Model (quarks, leptons, gauge bosons) are massless. What the Higgs mechanism does, respecting the underlying symmetry of the Standard Model while spontaneously breaking that symmetry, is to give all of the particles and the weak gauge bosons mass, as well as protecting the masslessness of the photon. A physical consequence of the Higgs mechanism is that there is one massive scalar field that cannot be absorbed in the masses of the other particles, and this is the Higgs boson.

• Bulleted text

• Unbroken SM– Quarks, leptons massless– All gauge bosons massless

• Higgs mechanism– Respects the underlying

gauge symmetry– Spontaneous symmetry

breaking– Quarks, leptons mass– W,Z mass– remains massless

• Consequence– Physical scalar field

• The Higgs Boson

Making a point• Full text with emphasis

• Without the Higgs mechanism, all of the particles in the Standard Model (quarks, leptons,gauge bosons) are massless. What the Higgs mechanism does, while respecting the underlying symmetry of the Standard Model as well as spontaneously breaking that symmetry, is to give all of the particles and the weak gauge bosons mass, but protecting the masslessness of the photon. A physical consequence of the Higgs mechanism is that there is one massive scalar field that cannot be absorbed in the masses of the other particles, and this is the Higgs boson.

• Bulleted text with emphasis

• Unbroken SM– Quarks, leptons massless– All gauge bosons massless

• Higgs mechanism– Respects the underlying

gauge symmetry– Spontaneous symmetry

breaking– Quarks, leptons mass– W,Z mass– remains massless

• Consequence– Physical scalar field

• The Higgs Boson

Dear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen, 4th of December 1930 As the bearer of these lines, to whom I graciously ask you to listen, will explain to you in more detail, how because of the "wrong" statistics of the N and Li6 nuclei and the continuous beta spectrum, I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the "exchange theorem" of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. Namely, the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles, that I wish to call neutrons, which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle and which further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton masses. The continuous beta spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in beta decay a neutron is emitted in addition to the electron such that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is constant... I agree that my remedy could seem incredible because one should have seen those neutrons very earlier if they really exist. But only the one who dares can win and the difficult situation, due to the continuous structure of the beta spectrum, is lighted by a remark of my honoured predecessor, Mr Debye, who told me recently in Bruxelles: "Oh, it's well better not to think to this at all, like new taxes". From now on, every solution to the issue must be discussed. Thus, dear radioactive people, look and judge. Unfortunately, I cannot appear in Tubingen personally since I am indispensable here in Zurich because of a ball on the night of 6/7 December. With my best regards to you, and also to Mr Back.Your humble servantW. Pauli

The history of the neutrino

Dear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen, 4th of December 1930 As the bearer of these lines, to whom I graciously ask you to listen, will explain to you in more detail, how because of the "wrong" statistics of the N and Li6 nuclei and the continuous beta spectrum, I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the "exchange theorem" of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. Namely, the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles, that I wish to call neutrons, which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle and which further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton masses. The continuous beta spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in beta decay a neutron is emitted in addition to the electron such that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is constant... I agree that my remedy could seem incredible because one should have seen those neutrons very earlier if they really exist. But only the one who dares can win and the difficult situation, due to the continuous structure of the beta spectrum, is lighted by a remark of my honoured predecessor, Mr Debye, who told me recently in Bruxelles: "Oh, it's well better not to think to this at all, like new taxes". From now on, every solution to the issue must be discussed. Thus, dear radioactive people, look and judge. Unfortunately, I cannot appear in Tubingen personally since I am indispensable here in Zurich because of a ball on the night of 6/7 December. With my best regards to you, and also to Mr Back.Your humble servantW. Pauli

energy spectrum

How many words? What about formulae?

There are essentially two extreme views about the purpose of the slide.

a) It is to help the speaker to remember all of the points that need to be mentioned.

b) It is to help the audience identify the crucial facts from the stream of consciousness that issues from the speaker.

Both are valid, but lead to rather different styles of slide. The next few slides illustrate this point.

Mathematical formulae present several problems. PowerPoint, in particular, is not very good at them (it was not really designed for scientific presentation). Very long or complicated formulae will need a lot of explanation if they are to be understood by the audience – even if they are “well-known”. Detailed (theorem-like) derivations are likely to be difficult to follow unless taken slowly.

In all of the above, there are circumstances in which either long text (e.g. a quotation) or a complicated formula (e.g. the key result) needs to be presented. When this happens, think about how the attention of the audience can be drawn (through highlighting or other means) to the bits that are really important.

Formulae

• Simple formulae in PowerPointy = m x + c

y = m x + c

y = m x + c

• Or in Microsoft Equation 3.0

• Or Mathtype 5.0

y mx c

y cmx

Note:

PowerPoint 2010 is somewhat better at formulae

Complicated Formulae

a =22 GFneE = 7.6 10-5 E

Where is the electron density ; is the density (g/cm3) ; E is the neutrino energy (GeV)

eP

ELm

ELm

ELmsssccc 4442313122312

213

221

231

232 sinsinsinsin8

EaL

ELm

ELm

ELm sssc 4

213444

223

213

213 21sinsincos8

221

231

232

231

2213211

mas

E

Lmssc 422

23213

213

213sin4

ELm

ELm

ELmsssccsssc 4442313122312231312

213

221

231

232 sinsincoscos8

ELmsssccsssccsc 4

21323122312

223

213

212

223

212

212

213

221sincos24

(Richter: hep-ph/0008222)cij=cosij, sij=sinij

A Bit of Animation

a =22 GFneE = 7.6 10-5 E

Where is the electron density ; is the density (g/cm3) ; E is the neutrino energy (GeV)

eP

ELm

ELm

ELmsssccc 4442313122312

213

221

231

232 sinsinsinsin8

ELmccsc 4

2223

212

212

213

221sin4

EaL

ELm

ELm

ELm sssc 4

213444

223

213

213 21sinsincos8

221

231

232

231

2213211

mas

E

Lmssc 422

23213

213

213sin4

ELm

ELm

ELmsssccsssc 4442313122312231312

213

221

231

232 sinsincoscos8

ELmsssccsssccsc 4

21323122312

223

213

212

223

212

212

213

221sincos24

(Richter: hep-ph/0008222)cij=cosij, sij=sinij

Matter

Effects

CP-Violation

3-flavour expression

Pictures and Plots

Pictures can enliven an otherwise pedestrian presentation, but it can become tedious if this reduces to the level of “here are some snaps I took while on holiday”. A montage can look quite impressive, and help give the audience a real “feel” for the issues. The eye/brain combination is a fantastically fast “pattern recognition” machine, and so you do not need to spend a long time on straightforward pictures. However, for each picture shown, you should at least indicate (with a caption/title and/or in words) what is shown and why you have shown it.

Plots, on the other hand, are the very heart of a physics presentation (yes, and that includes theory!) It is very difficult to think of any subject that would not be made more clear to the audience than a well-chosen plot. Given their importance, then, it is surprising how often plots fail to make the impact that they should. Often, this is because one or more of the following obscure the meaning …

– The plot is too small

– There is no title

– The axes are unlabelled, or the labels are unreadable

– The scales are unreadable or missing, as are the units

– There are a lot of extra “lines” that are irrelevant to the point being made

– The plot was originally in colour but is now in B&W

– The plot itself is meaningless (many “double log” plots are meaningless, as are many “data-montecarlo” comparisons)

Pictures

Sakharov

The RAL site with the 2nd target station and diamond

The 160m long NA31 decay tube and helium tank

Me with Lord Sainsbury and the VC of Sheffield in the Boulby mine in North Yorkshire

The Sun by the SoHo satellite

A tip with pictures and plots

• Photographs and figures can take up a lot of space. The size of the file can be reduced dramatically by compressing pictures and plots – this file, for example, went from 25MB to 4MB after compressing all pictures!

Animation

There are several different types of animation.

In-Slide Animation (revealing the contents of a slide in stages) can be very effective in making a point. It can also be very irritating to the audience – a kind of striptease.

Between-slide Animation (slide transition) can be used to emphasise, highlight or add further information by duplicating the slide, and making the two slightly different. [This can be different with dissolve.]

Embedded clips (Quicktime, Realtime, video) can be very illuminating, but beware – unless you can use your own laptop, it may not work as you expect when transported to a different computer.

Remember that using animation may slow you down – you keep having to return to the laptop/console to activate the next bit of the slide (unless you have a remote mouse). You can use the timer to activate the next bit automatically, but again this is likely to be different on different computers, and requires very careful timing of the words – it becomes a “play” and not a discourse.

As with everything else, it is up to you. If you like it, and you think it helps the audience, do it, but don’t overdo it (unless you wish to make some specific point that requires overdoing it, of course).

A lot of Animation

• Here is a line of text– And another

• And another

• And Here is some more– And more

• And more

The Structure of a Talk

I Keep Six Honest Serving Men …I Keep Six Honest Serving Men …Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling

I keep six honest serving-menI keep six honest serving-men(They taught me all I knew);(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.And How and Where and Who.

The Structure of the Talk

The Structure of a talk is important, and should “flow” naturally. How you make this “flow” occur depends upon many things, some to do with the subject of the talk, but others to do with the length of the talk, the nature (and size) of the audience, and perhaps also the nature of the auditorium and equipment. Apart from the doggerel from Kipling above, there is another easily memorable piece of advice (originally given to me as guidance for writing my thesis) – say what it is you are going to say, say it, and then say that you have said it! In more conventional terms, the talk should have most (usually all) of the following.

Title [The title should be informative, enticing and give an idea of the style]

Who gives the talk [where you are from] [when and where the talk is being given]

(Note: update this last field – nothing annoys an audience more than the impression that they are being given warmed up leftovers!)

Outline

The talk itself [If a long talk, perhaps some “chapter headings” from time to time]

Summary and/or Conclusions

Note that people can only absorb so much information without a pause for breath. For any talk longer than a few minutes, and particularly for a “lay” audience [i.e. those not already expert in the field], break up the flow of technical detail with relevant asides, anecdotes, “soft” information, jokes, etc …

Example: After working through, say, a slide full of mathematics, tell the audience something about your feelings when you first completed the calculation “When I reached the end of this calculation, I can tell you, I needed a pretty stiff G&T”. This provides a pause, and also reminds the audience that this is actually hard work

TITLES• A Measurement of X

• In Search of X

• The Joy of X

• Much Ado About X

• X

• X: A Personal Journey of Discovery

Who Am I?Todd

Todd Huffman

Brian Todd Huffman

BT Huffman

B Todd Huffman

Dr. Todd Huffman

Doctor BT Huffman

Doctor BT Huffman

C.Phys., Ph.D., M.Sc., B.S.E.E., M.A.

Adventures in the Quantum Kitchen

E. PicureThe Escoffier Institute for Quantum Gastronomy

delivered to the

International Conference on Quantum Gastronomy

Bakewell, UK

1st April 2009

“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it;” Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

From Presenting Science, Oxford University Press 2010, © Çiĝdem İşsever and Ken Peach

Outlines• Start• Middle• End

• Start– Day 1

• Hour 1– Minute 1

» Second 1– Day n

• Hour n– Minute n

» Second n• Middle

– The First Mile• The second furlong

– The third chain» The fourth rod

– The last Mile• The last furlong

– The last chain» The last rod

• End– Of Civilisation

• In Europe– As we know it

» Amen

Outline of talk

• Introduction– Overview and status

• Recent Progress– Experimental setup– Data taking– Analysis– Results

• Summary and Conclusions


Adventures in the Quantum Kitchen

E. PicureThe Escoffier Institute for Quantum Gastronomy

• Introduction– Overview and status

• Recent Progress– Experimental setup

– Data taking

– Analysis

– Results

• Summary and Conclusions

International Conference on Quantum Gastronomy

Bakewell, UK

1st April 2009


Examples of Boxes and Bullets• Newtonian Mechanics

– Adequate for v<<c

• Special Relativity– Essential for vyc

For vJ0.01c– Deviation > 5 × 10-5 %– Relativity important

Deviation from

Newtonian Mechanics

%

v/c

Deviation0.00005%

0.01c = 3 × 106 m/s or 1.08 million kph


Sample Table


Summary and Outlook

• Summary– Status quo ante– Innovation– Result– Impact

• Outlook– What needs to be done– What I will do


Jokes and Cartoons

• Humour can make a serious point – properly done, it lodges in the brain a “hook” (the joke, cartoon or amusing image) that should recall the association – the serious point you were trying to make.

• Note that it has to be relevant – telling an “Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman” joke is a distraction (even if not offensive).

• One well-known example is the famous “penguin diagram” (top right) – the story goes that John Ellis had a bet with someone (Melissa Franklin in a pub in Geneva) that he could get the word “penguin” into his next published paper … illustrating the diagram with a penguin (bottom right) always helps …

copyright Peter and Barbara Barham

Posters• Posters follow the same rules as for a presentation, i.e. there are no rules

that cannot be broken … but … you need to get your message across, so– Clear, readable, concise– Well laid out, with a clear “flow”– Engage the audience

This famous 1st World War poster was designed by Alfred Leete (1882-1933) originally for a magazine cover and then adopted as a recruiting poster.

A “typical” physics poster

Posters (continued)• Portrait or Landscape?

1 2

3 4

1 2

34

Posters (continued)

Here is one that my predessor quite liked

But still a lot of words

Posters (continued)

Here is my own most recent poster

Many fewer words

… and finally - DRESS

Too Dressed up or too dressed down will be noticed.

Do you want to be noticed for your Pink Socks and Orange striped trousers or because you have given a brilliant talk which the audience understood?

Maybe you do. Do it for a reason it might be OK.

But in general Dress slightly better than your audience will dress.

Some final thoughts

There are no absolute rules in presentation – there are always circumstances in which any particular rule can (and should) be broken if it creates the desired effect and helps the audience understand better the point that is being made.

However, always remember that it is for the benefit of the audience that the presentation has been prepared. There is no excuse for making a sloppy, ill-prepared, random presentation.

Treat a presentation as a theatrical performance – rehearse it several times. If it is an important presentation (even if very brief – for example, the 5 minute “presentation” at the start of a job interview) ask the opinion of a (good) friend – one who will tell you the strengths and weaknesses of your draft.

Remember, if the people at the back cannot hear you, they probably will not understand the presentation – if a microphone is provided, make sure that it is properly fitted – up high, close to the throat. If you turn to the right (left) to look at the screen, make sure that the microphone is also biased to the right (left). If using a standard microphone, do not speak directly into it, but allow a few centimetres (if possible, try before the seminar).

Use of laser pointers – practice where you want to point, and keep still – laser pointers waving all over the place are very distracting – use it to POINT to what you wish to emphasise.

Rules to give an Excellent Presentation

“There are no Rules.”There seem to be only guidelines.

I mostly agree but there is one VERY important rule!

Graduate Student Seminars

Group A [Todd Huffman]

Christopher Arran [CA]Thomas Hadavizadeh [TH]Anita Nandi [AN]Mariyan Petrov [MP]Robert Shalloo [RS]Luigi Vigani [LV]Robert Williamson [RW]Huibo Zhang [HZ]

Group B [Laura Corner]

David Coplowe [DC]Mehpare Atay [MA]Nurfikri bin Norjoharuddeen [NbN]Talitha Bromwich [TB]Jonathan Burr [JB]Cees Carels [CC]Luca Cavalli [LC]Hannah Harrison [HH]

What you have to do

• Prepare a 10 minute talk on your experiment, or what you have been doing, or what you expect to do (send title to TH before Monday Jan 15th)

• Suitable to be understood by your class cohort (and supervisors)– Remember! They are Non-Experts!

• Practice talks – 30 minutes time available for each person, including feedback – all members of the group must attend!!!

• Final talks – 10 minutes + 5 minutes “discussion” + 5 minutes to set up the next talk – all members of both groups + LC + TH to attend; supervisors & others invited

Schedule

Wednesday [1115-1300] Wednesday [1115-1300]

Fisher Room Conference room

28/1 TH-A [CA,RS,AN] 28/1 LC-B [DC,MA,NbN]

4/2 TH-A [TH,MP,LV] 4/2 LC-B [TB,JB,CC]

11/2 TH-A [RW,HZ] 13/2 LC-B [LC,HH]

26/2 [Everyone] (Denis Sciama)MA,NbN,TB,CA,RS,AN,TH

5/3 [Everyone] (Denis Sciama)MP,LV,RW,HZ,JB,CC,LC,HH

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=847

The End

There are a few useful guides.

This one is available here

(apparently)

Feynman

– one of the great communicators

http://www.me.vt.edu/writing/csp.html



Some more books

Each chapter starts with a “story” illustrating something that went wrong with a presentation, and then trying to extract the lessons from it.

Probably closest to our approach … basically sound

“A horrendous book by my former professor...., Upon reading and studying this guide, I wholly expected that it would provide me with knowledge and confidence in presentations. I was unfortunate enough to encounter Dr. Walters as a professor AFTER reading this title, and am appalled at his lecturing skills. One would think that he would take a few hints/pointers from his own text and apply them to his lecturing. “

(Review on Amazon)

“This author has hit the proverbial nail on the head, sending much needed advice to speakers in the scientific community … With such a wealth of information in such a little book, it deserves a niche in the briefcase of all scientists and engineers interested in improving their public speaking skills.” J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. (from Chemical Abstracts Service)”

From our point of view, the book is too prescriptive in some cases just wrong (it advises writing out the full text of your presentation in words before you do anything else).

This is a new book from professional communicators (5 easy steps to the perfect presentation) and claims to be the result of many years of experience running courses. A bit too “slick” for our taste – in general, physicists are a bit wary of a presentation that is too slick.

A new book

Available now in all good bookshops… and discounted on Amazon

a presentation on presentation todd huffman & laura corner december 11 th 2014 “ ’t ain’t...

Documents

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exciting presentation

pt colour

good presentations

bad examples

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artificial examples